- A black and white pied
kingfisher after a successful
fishing mission - One of the 300-plus
hippos that live in Lake Mburo - The park is home to most
of Uganda’s zebras 1
2 3Safari on foot
and by boat
IT IS NOT EASY TO NAP ON THE DRIVE FROM
Entebbe to Lake Mburo. The view outside
the window puts paid to any attempts to doze.
Our Land Cruiser trundles through hills planted
with sweet potatoes, yams and banana palms,
passing villages where small kids run out
to wave, men gather round to fix beaten-up
old motorbikes, and goats nibble at the verge.
Vendors at roadside tables sell watermelon,
pineapples and jackfruit, and grilled tilapia
freshly yanked out of Lake Victoria, a strip
of gleaming blue visible across the fields.
The sweet smell of warm dust and wood
smoke wafts through the open windows.
At the turning to Lake Mburo, tarmac turns
to mud, and goats are replaced by zebra and
giraffe. A national park since 1983, the area is
not fenced, and cattle constantly wander in and
wildlife out. Stopping to pick up a guide, Bonny
Baloiganikiya, at the park entrance, we bump
along an orange track through a landscape
pocked with candelabra trees and termite
mounds. Baboons casually move off the road
to stare at us from the thickets. Warthogs
match their indifference for a while, then whirl
off through the bush in a panic. “Wild animals,
cattle and humans compete for food, land
and water here,” says Bonny. “The secret is for
people to benefit from the park, to support them
by putting up a school or a health centre. You
can’t have conservation without the community.”
Lake Mburo is a success story, with high numbers
of zebra and antelope, among which are topi and
eland. “The population is crazy because they have
no predators,” says Bonny. “There is only one lion,
and one lion cannot do much against 3,000 zebra.”
The centrepiece of the park is Lake Mburo
itself. We swap Land Cruiser for boat as the heat
of the day starts to fade. Swallows flit over
the water, competing for insects with wagtails,
sandpipers and weaver birds. Tiny malachite
kingfishers sit in the papyrus, flashing orange
and blue, while their larger cousins, pied
kingfishers, hover, then suddenly dive, sending
up splashes as they break the surface.
They’re not the only ones fishing. Men in small
boats let down nets, steering clear of the hippos
that honk from all around the lake. Thirty-three
sets of pink ears and piggy eyes turn towards us
as we drift near a pod in our own boat, the engine
momentarily stalled. Our captain, Yusuf, has
been merrily recounting tales of the 500 people
who die annually from hippo attacks in Africa.
“If a hippo capsizes the boat,” he says, “what
happens next is between you and your god.”
With the swallows in a riot above us, he gets
out an oar and starts to paddle.86 October 2019